10 feel-good space adventure movies you should watch now

Guardians of the Galaxy hits theatres this week, and boy has it been a long time since we could laugh at any movie related to space or aliens (non-derisively at least).

The trailers seem to be setting us up for a fun romp through the stars full of thrills and spills, laughs and gasps. With a leading man best known for his comedic turns in movies and on TV (Chris Pratt), we’re keeping our fingers crossed that Marvel’s latest blockbuster will live up to the feel-good vibes it’s generating.

In a space before time

But what about before? Surely, there were other space adventure movies that you could actually have a good time watching, before all space films became gloomy and depressing, favouring gritty realism over starry-eyed wonder, and almost always featuring genocidal aliens coming to screw the Earth.

Let us look back into an earlier, more optimistic time, when space used to mean “rip-roaring adventure!” and not “certain-painful-death!”. Here’s our list of the best space adventure comedies you should watch.

Once you’re done watching these films, it’s time to hit the theatres and catch Guardians of the Galaxy from 31 July in cinemas.

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The Last Starfighter

10 feel-good space adventure movies you should watch now

This was movie that launched a thousand arcades, with thousands of teens hopelessly pouring their tokens into video game machines. Alex Rogan is a trailer park teen who’s only outstanding achievement is his proficiency at an arcade game called “Starfighter”. When he gets the high-score, the game’s inventor (who turns out to be an alien) comes and takes him away to be a fly a real starfighter in a real galactic war.

Yeah, we know, we’ve had that dream a lot of times too. Too bad getting the high score never got us anywhere.